Hello and welcome to The Shaman Podcast. 

I am Mark Ashford. 

I am a Registered Usui Tibetan Reiki Master Teacher, a Shaman and author of books and online courses on Reiki and Shamanism.

Weekly I post a video and podcast for the Shamanic Energy of the coming week. The reading is general; please take what resonates with you.

Take a moment to hit the Subscribe button and Ring the Bell if you are on YouTube or subscribe if you are on a podcast platform. This way you will receive notifications of new Podcasts and videos.

In addition to the weekly events, I also produce books, online courses, podcasts and videos on all things Shaman and Reiki. So! Watch out for them!

For legal purposes, all videos and podcasts and other materials are strictly for entertainment purposes. Viewers and listeners have free will and are entirely responsible for any interpretation they place on the readings. I take no responsibility for individual viewer interpretation or actions. 

The show notes contain information on the card decks used in the readings and where to get more information on websites, books, and courses. Please check out the show notes.

Mystical Shaman Oracle Cards used in reading. Amazon link. - https://amzn.to/3fRG5Ow

Queen of the Moon Oracle Cards used in reading by Stacey Demarco https://shrtm.nu/uj5f

Music from Epidemic sound:

Referral Link: https://www.epidemicsound.com/referral/x4pe9m/

To learn more about my work, click here https://bit.ly/3h3E6I0

For a Personal Shamanic Energy Reading, please go to: https://bit.ly/30PmCd3

Thank you.

Beauty Way

Around us, there are beautiful things. Beauty may be in the home, the garden, trees, our family, our pets. Recognizing them and appreciating beauty around us is the message from the card for this week. Now, the trick is to bring beauty into your life every day. Beauty is also the way we live life, with integrity, patience, and acceptance. Patience may mean with a colleague at work, acceptance of a situation you cannot change. Where some will see darkness and struggle, look for ease and ways to bring light and energy to that situation.

Now is the time to stop and smell the roses. A moment of rest and stopping your head long rush to achieve will be highly beneficial for you. On a clear night sky, look up at the stars, astronomers know it is an amazing sight, they have names for the stars, but you don’t need those names, the fact the stars are there for you gaze on is enough. There are too many stars to count, just as there is too much wonder in you. There is beauty in you. Now is the time to learn what that is and move with it.

Nothing is truly broken. Relationships, if they are meant to heal, will do so. Do not struggle to fix friendships of people who were only meant to be in your life for a short time. They have left a gift and of their time and their connection and have moved on, so must you. At this moment, do not be seduced by the superficial glitter of something or someone you are flirting with. There may be a price to pay later.

The Staff

The Shaman’s staff is an important element of Shamanism and each Shaman has a staff that is uniquely their own.

It is a symbol of authority and power.

The staff gives you the power to find the middle course amongst many competing energies because it allows you to divine what is right and wrong and what must change for success. Moses carried a serpent staff through the desert, and with it he could summon the power of nature to heal or call plagues. 

Being able to use the staff energy to find the middle ground also tells you that all things must change. The middle ground is a balancing point between negativity and positivity, between paralysis and movement. Trust that as you move forward to what you have always wanted, use the energy in the Staff, this card to find a delicate balance between will and surrender, day and night, action and inaction.

Take corrective action if it is needed as you move forward. Your life is in the hands of destiny, fate, the universe, but nothing says you cannot steer it course, the Staff helps with course adjustments, just as it does with the start and end of action.

Water

Water is very powerful for a Shaman. It symbolizes purification, regeneration, birth, revival, and cleansing. Water can be enormously power, carving away earth and rock, moving boulders and trees as it creates a valley. Or submerge them as it creates slakes and oceans. If human kind is in the way of its creative force, it can be destructive and end lives of people and animals.

It can be sleepy and lazy as it meanders in shallow rivers across the landscape. Water that is scolding hot but is not bubbling and boiling looks the same as water just before it freezes into ice.

Water can also be something we cannot grasp. When it is steamed, it is as ephemeral as breath. It can be hard and unyielding as ice. 

Humans are 75% water. That includes our brain and our heart. Like the ebb and flow of the tides, allow sorrow and sadness, happiness and wonderment to flow through you now. Not only can these feelings be within you, but allow the world around you to flow over you and through you, knowing that you will remain and will move on to greater things.

This is like a baptism of newness and opportunity. There is a sense of newness, welcome it and embrace it

Queen of the Moon Oracle – Wanning Crescent - Surrender

The message of surrender is not about giving up. Far from it.

We all change as we grow and experience. Even if we are 60 years old, we are still learning, still experiencing and as a result we are changing. Take a moment to reflect on what no longer we need in ourselves. This takes patience, it requires you to think about what is no longer uniquely “you.”

Surrendering is a positive thought, feeling, or action. I grew up not knowing I had an uncle until my grandmother died and he inherited her house. Until then my father and his sister had not spoken to him for many years because of a major “unknown” dispute until this inheritance forced them to speak and reconcile. Voila! I had a new uncle.

They both recognised they were wrong in holding a grudge and missing out on the years of growth and change in themselves and each other. Finally, the family was reunited, a very positive outcome from surrendering. 

Surrendering their anger and years of hostility was a positive thing emotionally. Giving away sports equipment for a sport that you no longer take part in signals the end to a part of your life that is over. You enjoyed it while you took part. Now, move on and find something different as they did.

This phase of the moon, Wanning Crescent, is a dark but protective time when we can change and grow from it. Use the time wisely to allow yourself to change and to grow. When the New Moon arrives, you will be able to shine and show how much you are reborn.